What happens if you overpay your credit card?

It’s easy to accidentally overpay your credit card. You might pay twice by mistake, or have autopay on but still make a payment manually. Whatever the reason, overpayment results in a negative balance on your card — and you have a couple of options for your next move.

CNBC Select explains what you can do if you overpay your credit card, the consequences and how to avoid a negative balance.

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If you find yourself with a negative credit card balance, you typically have two ways to deal with it:

• Wait it out. There’s no penalty for overpaying your credit card. If the negative balance isn’t significant and you use the card regularly, you can spend the statement credit on purchases. Once you’ve spent it, you’ll be using your regular credit line again.
• Request a refund. If you overpaid by a large amount, you might want to get the money back. The process of requesting a refund for overpayment varies by issuer, but you can typically complete it online. When the issuer receives your request, they have seven business days to send you the funds.

Even if you don’t ask for a refund, the issuer will attempt to give you one if there’s any remaining negative balance on your card for more than six months.

Fortunately, overpaying your credit card won’t hurt your credit score.

Carrying a balance on your credit card affects your credit utilization ratio — or how much of your credit line you’re using. If you’re using more than 30%, your credit score can take a hit.

A negative balance on your card obviously won’t increase your credit utilization ratio, but it won’t help it either. Even if you had a negative balance of a million dollars on your card (to use an extreme example), your utilization can’t get lower than 0%, so there’s no benefit to carrying a negative balance.

Many experts recommend maintaining a credit utilization ratio of around 10% as this shows credit card companies that you are responsible with your credit.

Overpaying a credit card can be an inconvenience. If you want to avoid any errors in paying your card bills, there are a few strategies you can try.

Check for recent payments

Some credit card issuers make it easy to see if you’ve recently made a payment. If you have a card such as the Chase Sapphire Preferred® Card, tracking your payments should be simple. While Chase typically doesn’t update your current balance right away, it displays the most recently schedule payment in the card details when you check the app. You can also tap “View payment activity” under the card details to see all your recent payments and whether they have gone through.

With a credit card like the Capital One Venture X Rewards Credit Card, all you need to do is check the issuer’s app. Capital One shows your scheduled payments on top of the recent transactions section and often updates your available credit almost immediately after you make a payment.

If your issuer doesn’t make this information as easy to find, you can always go and check your transactions as your payment will also be displayed here.

Set up autopay

Perhaps the easiest way to avoid overpayment is to “set it and forget it” by signing up for autopay. With this feature, payments will be made automatically and you can opt to pay the entire balance each month. Just don’t forget you have it in place or you risk ending up with a negative balance by scheduling an extra payment manually.

For example, if you have the Citi Simplicity® Card, you can set up autopay by linking your bank account through the Citi website or mobile app. You can customize the payment type (i.e. last statement balance or minimum payment due), how often you’d like to pay per billing cycle and what date(s) you’d like your payments to be made. Plus, the card doesn’t charge any late fees, so you won’t be charged for it if you miss a payment.

Sign up for account alerts

Autopay isn’t for everyone. If you’d rather control how much you pay and when you make the payment, it’s up to you to monitor your credit card balances and due dates. Luckily, your issuer can still help you with that task if you set up account alerts. You’ll get credit card notifications about your balance, payments due and more, depending on what you opt into. Usually, you can set up alerts online or through the credit card app when you sign in to your account.

If you want additional alerts, consider a credit monitoring or identity protection service. Aura offers a long list of security features, including credit monitoring, which alerts you of unusual transactions, new credit inquiries and suspicious changes to your finances.

Put any extra money in a savings account

Just because you may have the funds to pay off credit card spending immediately doesn’t mean it’s the best choice. Lenders want to see responsible credit usage and you may be leaving money on the table by paying your balance too quickly.

Since you have until the due date to pay off your balance, consider keeping your extra money in a high-yield savings account and taking it out for expenses when needed.

With the LendingClub LevelUp Savings Account, you can earn a strong APY and enjoy no monthly account fees. Plus, you can make free outgoing transfers which is a plus when paying bills or moving money around.

At CNBC Select, our mission is to provide our readers with high-quality service journalism and comprehensive consumer advice so they can make informed decisions with their money. Every credit card guide is based on rigorous reporting by our team of expert writers and editors with extensive knowledge of credit card products. While CNBC Select earns a commission from affiliate partners on many offers and links, we create all our content without input from our commercial team or any outside third parties, and we pride ourselves on our journalistic standards and ethics.

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